Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Get Back to the Chickens and Pigs

On Thursday Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez is scheduled to be sworn in for yet another presidential term,
unless Jesus Christ, “the greatest socialist in history”, decides that it is
time for him to join the people’s commune in the sky.

Hugh the Horrible is not even in Caracas as I write. He is in Havana, dying of
cancer. There he is surrounded, a bit like a medieval monarch, by his
court and his kin, all worried about the future, the future of the ‘revolution.’
That is to say, they are worried about the future of the wealth that they have
managed to siphon off during the fifteen years Chavez has run his benighted
‘Bolivarian democracy.’

The ostentatious riches of the Chavez family in Barinas, the
state where he was born, and where his brother Adán is governor, stands in
non-socialist contrast to the poverty of most of the local people. The
old family home, once a small chicken and pig farm, is now a sprawling
state-of-the-art ranch, a sort of Venezuelan version of South Fork.

In the state capital, also called Barinas, the family has a
luxury mansion in a high-walled compound in one of the city’s most exclusive
districts. They are to be seen travelling around the place in
heavily-armed SUVs. According to opposition figures, the clan owes a
further twenty estates throughout the province. Elena Frias, the
president’s mother, has an ostentatious taste for the better things of life,
including designer clothes. Viva la Revolution!

If Elena and the rest of this grubby and nepotistic shower
are worried by the expected death of the golden goose they can’t be nearly as
worried as his thuggish allies across the region. There is the Castro
regime in Cuba,
desperately trying to keep the demagogue alive on life support, just as he kept
their regime on life support for years now with cheap oil. There is the
semi-literate Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, whose crack-brained
political schemes, all supported by rent-a-mob, have been underwritten by
Comrade Chavez.

In all Chavez has spent an eye-watering trillion, yes trillion dollars
in state funds to support foreign allies, his family and all his other domestic
political hangers-on, including the ‘Boligarchs’ – oligarchs who have
flourished under the so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ - , the sort of greedy
and self-serving gangsters that are such a feature of Vladimir Putin’s
Russia.

Meanwhile Venezuela,
with some of the richest oil reserves in the world, has gone step by step down
the primrose path to economic ruin. The cupboard is bare. Chavez’
critics say that the very fact that he has
repeatedly sought medical treatment in Cuba
over the last eighteen months for his recurring cancer is a damming indictment
of his stewardship of Venezuela.

Damning indeed. A country that should be floating on
oil revenues is sinking under a surging fiscal deficit. Inflation is out
of control. The overvalued Bolivar, the national currency, is sliding on
the black market. The country’s debt, now standing at an estimated
$160billion, has increased five-fold under Chavez. The economy has been
crippled by the price and currency controls that are such a favoured feature of
state socialism.

Chavez is dying of cancer. Venezuela is dying of cancer too,
the cancer of socialism. This disease has such a predictable pathology,
always resulting in the inevitable outcome of ruin, necrosis and decay.
Intelligent people recoil from it in horror. But then intelligence was
never one of El Jefe’s virtues. There may – thank goodness - be no hope
for him. There is, perhaps, hope for Venezuela, once this appalling
demagogue is off the scene and his corrupt and venal family have been dumped in
the dustbin; once Elena and her dreadful progeny get back to the chickens and
pigs.

12 comments:

I have a young cousin, probably headed for the State Dept., who specialized in Latin American studies and has been traveling all over South America in the past few years. The Peruvians hired him to walk all the trails around Machu Picchu and write a hiker's guide. He lived in Pablo Escobar's old hideout in Colombia for 6 months. He spent a year in Cuba doing post-grad studies. According to him, Venezuela is the worst. It was no paradise before Chavez, but really took a dive when he took over.

While I consider El Commandante to be a despicable demagogue, the archetypal "chav", I make no moral distinction between Chavez squandering his country's oil wealth and enriching his family in the process and Sheikh Mansur of Abu Dhabi squandering his country's oil wealth on a football team (Manchester City).

All revolutions or regime changes seem to do in places like Venezuela is swap one set of thugs for another set. It took centuries for developed nations to reach the levels of democracy and competence that they now enjoy so perhaps it is no surprise that developing nations lag far behind. However developing nations do have the advantage that developed nations did not have in that they have developed nations templates from which to build upon. It is very strange though that those templates are largely ignored. Also now developed nations are throwing away all their gains by embracing socialist practices that have been known to have failed in the past and are being seen to be failing in the present. We humans are perverse or what?

Apart from a historical point of view ( which has enlightend me once again) this post was hillarious! Love the way you work with words " dumped in the dustbin" or "spent an eye-watering trillion" and lastly "..gone step by step down the primrose path to economic ruin. The cupboard is bare." Time for my 2nd cup of "java" and will read the rest of your posts later this afternoon.

About Me

Hi, I'm Ana! History is my passion -and that is not too strong a word - but I also enjoy politics, philosophy, art, literature and travel. In addition I have a deep interest in witchcraft, in all of the ancient arts. Apart from that I'm a keen sportswoman. I play lacrosse and tennis, but I love riding most of all. I have my own horse, Annette.